As part of a study to improve firefighter safety and effectiveness, fire researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and partners from fire service organizations have turned abandoned wood-frame, single family houses near Spartanburg, SC into a training ground for new science-driven fire-fighting techniques.

The NIST team has gathered data during the live fire experiments using measurement of temperature and total heat flux to assess the effectiveness of new fire-suppression tactics known as transitional fire attack. Transitional fire attack begins by applying water as soon as possible from the exterior of a burning house -- before firefighters enter the structure -- and then proceeding into the interior. More

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has approved more than $1 million in Disaster Assistance Loans for residents in Alabama affected by severe storms, tornadoes, high winds and flooding from April 28 through May 5, 2014.

"Currently, 33 disaster loans have been approved in the amount of $1,017,000 for affected survivors," said Frank Skaggs, director of SBA's Field Operations Center East in Atlanta. "We are pleased to get these loans approved so residents in the disaster area can start to rebuild and resume their normal lives. I encourage anyone who has not submitted an SBA disaster loan application to do so as quickly as possible." More

Sonardyne International Ltd.'s maritime security division has delivered its largest ever order of Sentinel Intruder Detection Sonar systems to an undisclosed country in Asia. The sonars will be deployed to protect strategically important naval bases across the country and will be configured to provide long range, wide area detection, tracking and classification of underwater threats. The system uses Sonardyne's latest tracking software that combines data from multiple sonars to produce a single picture of the underwater environment, providing wide area situational awareness to operators and commanders. More

Mountain View, CA-based Rhombus Power Inc.'s first product, Mercury, is a networked, scalable, digital, highly accurate, easy to use neutron detector. Mercury can be readily used by homeland security, defense, and intelligence communities to detect contraband nuclear weapons and materials, the company says. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has independently verified that Mercury meets ANSI standards.

Mercury is being demonstrated in Gaithersburg, MD on May 29th at the NIST to a number of U.S. government agencies. An earlier prototype of Mercury was successfully demonstrated in December 2013 at UC-Berkeley to scientists and U.S. government agencies. More

Cape Canaveral, FL-based Comprehensive Health Services, Inc (CHSi) has been awarded a five-year, $97 million contract by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to provide medical exams services in the 48 continental states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam as well as in Canada, Saipan and various other duty locations.

As part of the contract, CHSi will conduct an average of 21,000 pre-employment exams, 1,000 employee exams, and 6,000 employee drug testing exams per year. More

Portland, OR-based Tripwire, a provider of risk-based security and compliance management solutions, and PAS, a provider of software for process safety, cyber security and asset reliability for the energy, power and process industries worldwide, have announced a technology partnership and integration. The partnership is part of the Tripwire NERC Alliance Network program that has been designed to foster collaboration on critical infrastructure compliance and security solutions that help companies efficiently and effectively achieve NERC CIP compliance. More